It was the first night at summer camp! I could not wait to sit by the campfire and look at the stars and the moon in the night sky. My friends Sarah, Ellie, Joe and and I gathered around the fire ready to roast some marshmallows.

I looked at the sky and asked myself: Why can't we see the moon tonight? Other nights the moon looks full in the sky and sometimes it looks like there is just a sliver missing. So why does the moon look different sometimes?

I ran back to my cabin to get my notebook and a pencil. On the top of the page I wrote today's date, June 20th.

Tonight, I could not see the moon at all. So, I took my notepad are wrote that the moon was not visible, but I drew the stars that I could see.

A couple of days later, it was time for a game of hide and seek. My friends and I ran to the end of the dock to hide. We looked at the sky and tonight you could just see a sliver of the moon lit up. We looked at each other confused because just days ago we could not see the moon at all.

Our camp counselor, Katie, who was hiding just around the corner heard us talking about the moon. When she came over, we asked her why the moon was not visible a couple days ago, but today you could see the moon.

"Does the moon give off its own light?", asked Sarah.

Katie told us that the moon did not give off its own light. She told us that the moon reflects the light of the sun.

"The light from the sun bounces off the moon". I exclaimed!

Well, if the light from the moon bounces off the sun, why isn’t the moon always lit up then? Why does the appearance of the moon change?

Libby told her friends that the moon orbits the Earth.

Buzzing with excitement and questions, we ran back to our cabin to gather our collection of drawings of the moon and the night sky. We decided that we would have to keep drawing the moon if we wanted to solve this mystery! 

That night, I went to bed dreaming about the glowing moon. My head was racing with thoughts and questions about the moon. I could not wait for the rest of the summer here at camp.

The next night, after a day filled with kayaking, swimming, and activities, I was eager to see what the moon would look like tonight. 

I grabbed my notebook and began drawing the moon. The moon was shaped like a crescent. We noticed that tonight, more of the moon was lit up. But I still thought to myself, why does the way the moon looks keep changing?

We gathered our drawings and pinned them to the bulletin board in our cabin. After looking at our drawings we discovered more of the moon became visible each night. The drawings showed that the moon lit up more and more from the right to the left.

We realized that each night when I looked at the moon, it looked different. Ellie said,"I think that the moon stays the same, but it looks different sometimes because of the way it moves around the earth. Sometimes we only see parts of the moon."